Finishing the Basement

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The basement footings are well underway in this photo with rebar being sunk into them where the walls will eventually be placed. If you look to the right of the man standing above ground with the yellow shirt on, you will see an area roped off with caution tape. If you look below this roped area you’ll notice a big hole in the dirt. This is the old cistern that sat right outside the back door. If I remember correctly it was about 17 ‘ deep and 8 ‘ wide. It will eventually be filled in with sand.

The next step was to put the basement walls in which unfortunately I missed the day they did this. I don’t have any pictures of this process, only the completed work. Notice the board on the right side of the picture below which leads from the dirt across the opening to the top of the basement wall. The workers would walk across this board to the top of the basement wall and then down a ladder to the basement floor.

Another process and person I didn’t get any pictures of was of our plumber, Greg, doing all the work necessary for all our new plumbing. He did a lot of work I don’t fully understand or appreciate, but was so necessary. Thanks, Greg! I also missed the day when the concrete company filled in the basement floor and when they backfilled the dirt around the basement walls. But here is what it looked like after they were done.

In the picture above you can see where large squares of cement were left out of the top of the basement wall. This is where the metal “I” beam will need to go through to move the house back onto it’s new foundation.

Before we could get the house moved back onto the basement we had to find a framer who would put in the interior basement walls which had to match up exactly with the interior load bearing house walls. This proved to be a little bit of a problem because once we explained what we were looking for to contractors, they backed away from the job. They didn’t want the liability that things wouldn’t match up perfectly. But we finally prevailed and found a guy who did an excellent job. Not only were we now ready for the house to be moved back, but we could also let our puppy, Latte, run free on our farm for the first time and he loved it! So here’s a few cute pictures of him, not at the farm, but at our city house.

And of course after all that running he certainly felt worthy of resting on our lounge chair in the backyard.

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about me . . .

In 2014 we purchased a farmhouse built in 1897 on the plains of Kansas. We call it “The Noah Farm” because the name Noah means “rest”. This is the story of our restoration of this house, land, and our search for rest in the midst of chaos. We hope this blog will encourage you to dream big and also to find the inner rest of the soul that we all long for.